The Diamond Waterfall

by Pamela Haines

  Tired after their expedition, most of them went to bed early. The next morning only Take and Tante Elise were about. Take sat at a table in the garden surrounded by papers. Some fellow zealots were coming from Paris soon for a meeting.

  Sophie joined them outside. “Oh, these politics,” she said. Tante Elise looked up from her tatting:

  “I’m not sure that all this should happen in our house—it is dangerous. I ask myself what the Castle would say? He would not be persona grata—”

  A little later, noticing few people about, Lily heard that Valentin and Teodor and some others had gone off shooting. Sophie said, “They go very early, before the sun rises, and will sleep in some huts. They pass some days with it.”

  For Lily it was as if the sky had suddenly darkened. She was horrified at the strength of her feelings—was certain that everyone present must have noticed something…. But the Xenescu departure soon after with its noise and bustle—the children reluctant, Madame wan and proud-looking—served to distract. … All the same, it was a long day. She wrote to Sadie. To Robert. To Alice. She did not sleep during siesta time, but walked to and fro in her room. What is happening to me? Sweet reason—but she could not stay still long enough to apply it.

  In the middle of dinner, he reappeared. “My apologies, my apologies, I am late.” He opened his arms as if to embrace everyone.

  “But, Tino—where are the others? Where is my Teodor?”

  He said, surprised, “In the mountains of course, dear Sophie.” He explained, “It is only I who’ve returned. It was suddenly ennuyeux—to be away…”

  All the while he hadn’t looked directly at Lily at all. Her heart thudding, the color rushing to her face—oh, but surely she could not hide her delight. A place made for him at the table—near to Sophie but opposite to her. The food tasting now quite different, bright colors of saffron rice, tomatoes, flavor and texture of quails. Wine: amber and jewel red. A bunch of small white grapes. She was possessed by a feverish excitement so that as the candles glowed on all the colors she hardly knew where to look—it was as if everything had been touched—with what? The very air hummed. (Oh dear God, what is happening to me?)

  “Please, may I come inside your bed tonight?”

  “Certainly not,” she said airily. “Whatever will you think of next?”

  “But I’m especially back from the mountains, just so that—”

  “I don’t care if you traveled from Manchuria. The answer is no.”

  “Please—I’m so sad otherwise, too sad. Please—Lily. I shall be very careful, I am always very careful—”

  “You’re very free with Christian names, aren’t you? And perhaps—just a little absurd?”

  “No, no, it’s you who are foolish. But I don’t pay attention. I come inside anyway.”

  Her bedroom door had a lock. The window had shutters, which she fastened tight. It was only when she was already in bed that she realized she had not, after all, locked the door.

  I never meant, she thought afterward, I could never have meant to lock it. She lay very still then, as if waiting. Her body didn’t move but her heart thudded still, and all her skin felt as if fevered.

  Just after midnight she heard the door handle turn.

  He didn’t say anything at first but just placed the light he was carrying beside the bed, and then knelt down near her pillow.

  “Whatever? You know what I said—”

  “And you remember what I said? Yes, yes, you do—oh, but you are a silly lovely lily and now is not at all the time for talking …”

  Certainly it was not the time for talking. The great wooden bed so wide and generous—the flutters of thought, she was soon rid of those—she was all body, all feeling. All that glowing of skin, thudding of heart had been for this. The same body which all those years ago—the fumbling of Frank, clumsy eagerness of Edmund, dreadful bejeweled pain and humiliation in Nice, in Paris …

  For a while afterward he tried to still her trembling.

  “Just lie very quiet please in my arms—you’re not frightened of me that I make you so happy? And that I don’t talk, only to say what beautiful breasts you have and other things that I only know how they’re called in French…. You do like me a little? It’s not that you’re angry I’m so naughty? No, I don’t go to sleep—-you may, but I stay now to talk to you, and touching, always touching, until it is time we begin again.”

  She wasn’t sure which were best, the days or the nights. Those enchanted days which she and Val (for she called him that, preferring it) spent now always together. By common consent, a couple. Days that rushed by. And yet stretched out, each one a great length of shining cord. Days joined to nights …

  Somehow in all the excitement she had not expected to like him. She distrusted charm, good looks even more (what of Edmund?), self-satisfaction most of all. A rich and probably spoiled young man. That was what she had seen—yet been unable to resist. Her happiness she put down to the pleasures of the bed, the mountains, the scented pinewoods, the long late summer days. … So how to explain her terror, her sudden glimpses of the silken cord snapping? The woods growing dark, bears hunted in the mountains, hungry wolves making their way down to the villages. Cold winter. Endings …

  But of course the nights were the best. Then after pleasure and more pleasure, there would be the quiet talking:

  “Sophie told me that perhaps you’re not very happy, so I watched always. Now you can tell me about this Robert, and Lionel and—everything.” It was easy, good even, to tell the story, which was like a shameful secret. She told every sad detail. Val took it matter-of-factly, “Ah, but there are people like that,” and then exploded with anger on her behalf. He went around the room, kicking at furniture, thumping the end of the bed. “It shan’t be, it shan’t be.”

  “Oh but it is,” she told him sadly. Feeling the sudden cold wind of hopelessness. For what could Val, would Val, do? What else could all this happiness mean except—endings?

  And the necklace, the Diamond Waterfall—how to explain that she had sold her soul for that? “Ah no,” he said, lying still, hands cupped over her breasts, “you sell your body—and that is not important, not important at all.” He stopped for a moment. “Oh, what frightful tosh I’m talking. I mind that you did, I mind—and that is important.”

  “You think yourself, your darling self, very important—”

  “But I’ve always been so—to my mother, my sisters, my brothers, to Ana.”

  “Ah yes, Ana.”

  She had thought there would be upset about Ana Xenescu, his former mistress. But almost from the beginning he’d spoken of her, although not often, always quite naturally. It was she, Lily, with her sudden spasms of jealousy, of nagging curiosity, who asked, and asked.

  “But, Lily, when I was sixteen, seventeen, I had to learn to be pleasing. And Ana, who had a husband always away from home and very complaisant, she chose me—and I was very proud. She was altogether very beautiful then. It’s only lately she’s become so fat—it is easy for Romanians to become fat. She and I, we had many many happy days together. So of course, I became very good for other women. Then after some time what happened was that when it should all end, she didn’t want it to. And because she is older and of a jealous temper, she’s angry when I look at others. But it was all over for me nearly two years ago, when I was twenty. Then she saw me here—perhaps she hoped I’d return—and I’m weak and give her little attentions, but because I don’t come to her room anymore, and you are here and are so beautiful, there’s a crise de nerfs, and what can I do?”

  “I found her difficult, a little,” Lily said. “I think too that before this, she didn’t like me. Now I’m sorry for her.”

  “Lily, I also was giving—you understand what I mean? It’s not right that because she has been the teacher, she shall be accaparante.”

  Lily thought, I must not monopolize him either. I must never become like that. And yet she could see it so clearly, how it might so easily be that way
. When, oh when, did the light easy conversation, the badinage, when did it suddenly hint at boredom? (“I like women very much,” he had said.)

  She said lightly:

  “It’s my turn to tease you now. Your English is so good—but we say, you know, ‘come to or into bed.’ Not ‘inside’ as you said. ‘Inside’ is for when you come into me.”

  “But that is what I meant. Whatever else did you think I spoke of?”

  Time passing. Autumn crocus everywhere already, pale blue. “It is only here in Transylvania, that it is this color.” Excursions, walks in the pinewoods, an evening of dancing with the peasants, above Sinaia, on the grassy plateau outside the monastery. Music, the wild, sad sound of the pan pipes, trying to take the sound inside herself so that one day she would be able to call their music up, to remind her. For surely she would wish to be reminded—or haunted?

  September melted into October. October. And now its days ran away too.

  “I shall certainly be home for Christmas, Alice. I have told your Papa so. Really I would not have believed when I first left that I should agree to stay so long—two months already! But although I think about little Hal many many times every day, I know he is in safe hands (and two of those hands are yours!). I am now quite well again—my spirits completely recovered. I wish that you too, Alice, might have a visit such as this! Many of the guests mentioned in my letters have left us. Take is in Paris, and Ion grew bored and returned home. There are just a few relations left now. In three days’ time we leave for the capital, Bucharest.”

  They were so silly together. It was as if she had missed somewhere in her life the time for being silly. (Vicky, even dear Vicky, we weren’t really so.) All manner of stupid games. They joked about anything. The story of Red Riding Hood—

  “What a big—I don’t know the French—you have!”

  “All the better to—how do you say?—prick you with…. Oh, oh, ah yes. Now kiss me. And Lily—”

  “Yes?”

  “What a little trou you have …”

  “All the better to—oh, Val…. Never leave me, never leave me …”

  She asked him, “But what about Bucharest? You have a home there. We cannot—”

  “I shall arrange myself. Us. I shall go home—every morning.”

  And that was how it was.

  A different life. A town life, to which she’d become quite unaccustomed. The weather not yet settled into winter: days of blue skies and high clear air. She was to amuse herself, meet people, and indeed she did take part in the comings and goings—drives out, calling on others returned to Bucharest from the country or abroad.

  “What a pity that you don’t ride …” But all the same there was driving down the Chaussée with its avenue of linden trees. Like Rotten Row, the Park, the Bois, this was the place to be seen. Le tout Bucharest. Clothes were from Paris and to be shown off. Smart victorias sped by, drawn by jet-black Russian horses with long flowing tails. Lily saw, and was seen. The drive back down the Chaussée was more leisurely—one could be seen, and see more closely. Some “painted ladies” were pointed out to Lily. They seemed to her the smartest of all.

  Sophie and Teodor lived, as did Val, in the fashionable quarter. Lily loved to roam instead in the older parts of the town. Houses roofed with shingle and moss, roads and squares paved with round cobbles. Often neglected, already forgotten.

  The town ended so abruptly. On the fringe there were gypsy camps. Toothless old women coming up to the carriage with cards, offering to tell her fortune (but I would rather not know, dare not know). A horde of children, naked or with only a few tattered rags, scrambling up the carriage, calling out for alms, “Cinci parale, cinci parale. “

  Val contrived to spend some part of each day with her. Each evening he either dined with them, if they were at home, or called late, often very late. By morning (oh, those cold early dawn partings) he was back in his home. He woke always in his own bed. She was happy, happy, and tried not to count the days, which were ticking away.

  But, what was this—for she had not counted the days at all. … She noticed nothing, and it was not until one Sunday when together with Teo and Sophie she visited the metropolitan church. Its dim frescoed background, yellow-tinted walls. Against the nasal chanting, she prayed for Hal, and Alice. She thought then, suddenly, idly, How long I’ve been without a Visitor…. The last time was—when?

  She had never been regular, less so since the birth. Could it be, could it be? Among the tapers, silver lamps swayed, the air incense-laden. And now? she thought. But it was already the middle half of November. She was to stay another four weeks. … In that first sudden flash of thought, she knew with certainty what had happened. What was not meant to have happened.

  During the next few days, she said nothing; pushed the thought to the back of her mind—it could wait for confirmation. It gave her a slight air of nervousness though, a subtle change of manner which Val noticed. And was concerned.

  They visited the Bucharest Museum. He said to her:

  “I know that you aren’t happy about jewelry and precious stones, but here you must see our Cloşcă cu Pui, our Hen and Chicks—they are treasures that some quarrymen in Transylvania found maybe sixty years ago. They didn’t know the worth of them—they were tricked later. But look—three gold brooches, they are work of the Goths, so thick with emeralds, and sapphires, and turquoise, and pearls.”

  But she could not admire their beauty. Sick, doubly sick with the thought, feel, weight, texture of gold, of precious stones. For she knew already what was to become of her.

  “You worry because we must part—leave each other?”

  “No, no, it’s nothing. A little tiredness.”

  Because she didn’t as yet feel sick (and I was so sick, so early, last time), she wondered still if perhaps … But those swollen breasts, the vague darting pains, what was she to make of those? Swollen breasts which cried out more, more, and more to be sucked, to be kissed, caressed.

  She had begun to think, If I tell him, what will he do? At worst she imagined some resigned, cynical reaction: a suggestion perhaps that he knew a woman somewhere who … and that he would pay. It would be all right, he’d say. It had been so with Ana. These things happened every day….

  I at least am a married woman…. But Vicky? For two days her mind was sickeningly full of images. Memories kept in hiding …

  Then came the nausea—not so bad as before, but unmistakable. She made love more and more frantically in the faint hope of losing it naturally. While part of her didn’t want to lose it at all.

  And then she told him, after he’d asked again and again, “What’s wrong? Qu’as tu? qu’as tu?” At once his face, it was like a little boy’s. Panic. Emotions racing over it. Panic.

  “Darling. But I have been so very, very careful…. Always. What do I … You are really sure?”

  “Some signs—yes. Almost certain, now.”

  He changed suddenly then, saying, his arms about her, “I am proud. I can say only I am so proud. Of you, of me, of us …”

  He cried. She cried. They clung to each other. Words of love:

  “No, no,” he protested, “it’s not ‘I love you’ like I say when I’m wanting your trou—really, please, this is quite different, this is I love you.”

  “I must go home, as soon as possible. So that it may appear natural—”

  “Your husband—Robert?” But no more was said. She didn’t want to remember, neither of them must mention it, what must be done to make it “all right.” She had thought of it already when he showed her the Cloşcă cu Pui.

  Her departure. She had been going in three weeks’ time—but this was not the same. This was undue haste, agony of mind, rush of practical arrangements, the decision to tell Sophie and Teodor only that someone was not well at home. The sudden wild notions (his usually) that she should stay after all, she should somehow become his wife—for he could not get over the delighted discovery of his love, his real love. She listened, sick at heart,
with loving patience to elaborate fantasies of honorable divorce, of the three of them (and somehow Hal, too) living happily ever after, here in Romania. But then, realizing the absurdity, he would grow angry, sometimes with her, sometimes with life. Once again they would both cry. It seemed, those last five or six days of her stay, a fount of tears, as if one supplied the other. And love, they made love now with such care. “We must not hurt our baby, our own dear little baby.”

  The last hours were the worst. She did not think she would ever want to remember them again. She who could see no future, he who had put aside now all the wild ideas—who was just simply, desperately, unhappy.

  Arrangements of how to write each other—it would be through a friend in Paris, the letters in new outer envelopes, some story to be concocted. She too would write to Mme. Billaud in Paris. The false cheerfulness, protestations to Teodor and Sophie that it had been the most wonderful visit (and had it not?). That she was so very much the better for it…. Yes, yes, of course she would return.

  (“How ever, how ever are we to see each other again?”)

  A difficult future. A hopeless one. Images of jewels, of precious stones, crowding into her dreams. … As she woke in the morning of her last day she hallucinated, seeing in all its hateful beauty the shimmering, priceless, many-colored Diamond Waterfall.

  Their last night. His head between her breasts. “Lily, lily of the valley. So much more pretty than muguet des bois. My Lily. My valley … Lily, Lily …”

  10

  She thought she would never forget the misery of the journey back. The weather had turned very cold and, although she was supplied with hot water bottles, she felt chilled through and could not seem to get warm. She’d hoped at first there would be someone to travel with at least as far as Paris, but in the rush that had not been possible. She was lent a German maid, but as she didn’t speak German …

  There were delays, late starts: her luggage was opened, presumably with false keys, between Budapest and Vienna. Three summer dresses were stolen, she lost also two hatboxes and their contents. Still there, though, was the shirt of Val’s that she had begged from him (he had lifted it over his head at once, surprised: “But it’s not clean—I’ve worn it already three hours.”). I shall keep it, she thought foolishly, and never wash it. Hide it at the back of a clothes drawer—no, tie it up in brown paper—a secret parcel.